Jobs for Wine - Easy to navigate, well-design site with lots of listings viewable for free.

WineBusiness – Not too flashy, but 2.5 times as many listings as Jobs for Wine, with a wider focus on the whole wine production process from farm hands to sales jobs.

Indeed – An overall great site aggregating job postings from several sites.  Also shows salary data as a classmate so helpfully demonstrated, so you can get a good sense of industry benchmarks in a few simple mouse clicks.

Any other good ones? What did I miss?

Reflecting on an earlier post on wacky US wine laws, this horrible incident puts a lot of our silly laws in perspective. And serves as a good reminder on why winemaking is done by professionals.

Description:

The Social Media Manager will help create and perform tactical execution of social media strategy for Jackson Family Wines respective brands to Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates. The ideal candidate:

• Is a strategic and creative thinker, as well as a strong writer, and intuitive listener.
• Has a distinct, personable voice while engaging on behalf of our wineries.
• Monitors social media activities and influential opportunities across brands and departments, advising co-workers on best practices while encouraging successful participation.
• Embraces the concept that social media is a means to an end, and that building trust and cultivating communities are the end goal.

The social media manager may be the lead on a smaller winery and culinary programs for growth development and is the bench for the social media director position.

Responsibilities include:

• Assist in managing the presence of various brands on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, mobile channels, and various food and wine sites.
• Create and curate quality multimedia and written content.
• Monitor brand discussions and form thoughtful, immediate responses to relevant mentions, questions, and conversations.
• Establish relationships with key online influences.
• Develop and implement an organizational work flow for the department
• Work with research team to analyze social media monitoring reports and help convert them into actionable ideas and conversations.
• Educate coworkers on the proper use and implementation of new technologies.
• Help launch Internal JFW social media brand dashboard & knowledgebase.
• Report to the director of social media on a daily basis but work closely with entire communications team to gain growth development
• Produce and edit multimedia content for various wineries, events, and personnel.

Required Experience:
Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills
• Strong interpersonal and project leadership skills
• Excellent organizational and multitasking skills
• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment with numerous internal and external clients and brands
• 3-5 years preferred experience in Account Services, Brand Communications, Digital Media Production, Journalism, Creative Services, Internet & Web Services, or Community Management
• Consumer brands experience preferred. Experience in the wine
industry a plus, but not required.
• Good relationships within their respective online communities; understanding of how and willingness to build relationships
• Proficient in photography, video editing, and multimedia production.
• Customer service oriented.

Compensation:

• Compensation DOE
• Position is located in Santa Rosa, California and relocation package not included.

By now, you’ve seen the plastic or synthetic corks used on some wines instead of the natural cork from cork trees. They’re seeing an explosion of use in affordable imports from new wine regions (Spain, New Zealand), not to mention for domestic (e.g. US) white wines. What is their purpose? What are the tradeoffs?

Synthetic Corks
* Pros: No possibility of cork taint, which can ruin a bottle of wine. Holds it’s shape over time and won’t disintegrate if removed improperly. No environmental impact on finite population of cork trees.
* Cons: Wine is all about tradition. Plastic corks don’t absorb scent like a natural cork nor age uniquely. Simply, they look cheap. And to many consumers, they will perceive wine as cheap if it has a synthetic cork.

Natural Corks
* Pros: Hard to quantify the significance of history and tradition but both play important factors. As reports from the WWF and others suggest, the oak cork tree population has been closely regulated and protected due to their use in wine corks. A transition off of natural corks might bring these populations future into question.
* Cons: Cork taint can randomly ruin wine. The argument of protecting cork trees in their current state could be questioned due to the increased demand of wine corks in future years that could put excess demand on the tree population.

So, with all that, I’m not sure exactly where to sit. What do you think? Which do you prefer?

Living in San Francisco, there are probably too many choices of good places to go out and drink a glass of wine.  But, in the essence of collating my favorites, here a couple that are worth checking out next time you’re in the foggy city by the bay.

The Hidden Vine. As the name suggests, it’s a bit hard to find, nestled underneath a hotel lobby.  But given the location near Union Square this smartly keeps out all but the most determined drinkers. Ambiance is intimate and very date-worthy. The crowd is a great mix of locals and wine lovers. Tasty flights and knowledgeable staff.

Press Club. Not your typical wine bar, Press Club is a unique beast. Sourcing wines from half a dozen local wineries it feels more like a mashup of a Napa tasting room in a sleek, underground space.  You get the same counter experience you might find at an actual winery with talkative, friendly servers. Once you get a few too many pours in, you can sit down in some of the plush lounge chairs and order some appetizers. Great for hosting events, too.

The very chic Press Club

Fat Angel. Recently opened near the Fillmore Center, this unassuming spot strips away the pretension and delivers. Tasty, affordable wines and food. Don’t go to this spot to expect romantic ambiance, but for a neighborhood wine bar + restaurant, it is well deserving of praise.

My last post on mobile wine apps proved to be quite popular, launching me to the homepage of WordPress.com’s Freshly Pressed blogs. Yay, me!  Although I original only addressed iPhone and Android platforms, I wanted to take a more thorough look at the oft-forgotten, less-sexy mobile platforms: Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Palm.

Blackberry
Note: I found the general quality of apps in Blackberry AppWorld pretty subpar in regard to wine. There are some mediocre paid apps and a few good free gems which I’ve highlighted below.
Nat Decants. For an app not associated with a popular wine magazine or winery, she’s got impressive mobile platform support. Go Nat! As I noted in my earlier review, it also supports iOS and soon to support Android. Free.
PocketGrapes. A database of 70,000+wines with over 40,000 searchable by barcode, a free pricetag and favorable reviews from BB users makes this easily worth recommending. Free.

Windows Mobile
With the abject failure of the Kin, and the purported forthcoming fail of Windows 7 phone, it’s safe to say that Microsoft’s mobile strategy is a mess. But let’s pause that common thinking for a moment and give them a fresh chance. Unfortunately, I was quickly stymied by ole Redmond in my research. A simple search on the Windows Mobile web storefront reveals 4 results. All apps are paid, have no to bad reviews and look only tangentially relevant. So, unless I’m totally looking in the wrong spot, I cannot recommend any WinMo apps at the moment.

Palm
Although the future of WebOS post-HP acquisition is uncertain, the Palm Pre and Pre Plus did manage to attract a small but passionate group of users/developers and the platform is worth addressing. Sadly, it looks like the Palm Software Store is on its last legs as evidenced by this page URL (see ‘EOL’) and link to PocketGear.com, an independent cross-platform site of mobile apps. Ok, that sucks. Moving on to PocketGear, I selected the popular Palm Pre in order to determine which apps are compatible. Strangely, of the 21 results for a search of ‘wine’ all have the warning message, “Emulator-Software required!”. Alright, I’m throwing in the towel at this point as this is just starting to look sketchy. Some of the results have nothing to do with wine. A few are free, some are ridiculously expensive ($20+). Most only have a few hundreds to thousand downloads, which doesn’t inspire confidence for a casual user. I think it’s safe to say that the WebOS development ecosystem is dead. And PocketGear desperately needs to improve their internal site search.

[Image Credit: Wired]

8/10 Updated – More apps based upon your suggestions! Look forward to a future post including more reviews of other platforms (Blackberry, WinMo, etc.)

It should be no surprise by now that I work in technology. As such, I’ve got a special relationship with my smartphone. So it’s only logical that I try to integrate wine into my mobile life. As Apple has made me come to expect, there’s an app for that, too.

So, I’ve done some research for y’all and compiled the best wine apps across Android and Apple platforms below. Take a look and let me know if I missed any good ones.

iPhone
* Hello Vino. Provides suggestions for wine and food pairing in a clean interface. Free.
* Wine Enthusiast Guide. Made by the esteemed wine magazine, the app aggregates the 68,000+ reviews they’ve published over the years. If you’re into the critics, a good bet. $4.99.
* Wine Snob. Similar to the other apps but adds input from sommeliers and winemakers to give it a more professional touch. $5.99.
* Nat Decants. Per the creator herself, includes “…pairings, reviews, recipes, cellar journal, etc.” Looks good at first glance. Also has Blackberry support and Android on the way.

Android
* Swirl. Aggregates Snooth content including catalogue of 100,000+ wines, community reviews and pairing suggestions. Free.
* Wine+. Track tasting notes and cellar inventory with this straightforward looking app. $1.99.

[Image Credit: Sacre Bleu Wine]

Blending Camp, you ask, what’s that? Inspired by the DIY wine creation made famous by Crushpad, you’re provided several mixing varietals to create a Cab blend of your choice. In our case, we split up into 3 teams and got to begin wine science.

It was amazing to see how a 5% change of varietal profoundly changes the final wine. Once Judd, the winery’s namesake, picked his best wine of our submissions, we bottled and labeled the wine. In short, the whole experience was a blast.

For group events, company bonding or even a different way to experience Napa on your own, I’d highly recommend checking out Judd’s Hill or a similar winery blending program. Wine, personalized.

[Image Credit: Judd's Hill]

Thankfully, there is at least one service hoping to address this problem. Meet Snooth. To the uninitiated, here’s their pitch, “Snooth is a revolutionary web-based social shopping experience that is simplifying how people select, interact with, and purchase their favorite wines.” In addition to a great email newsletter with informative editorials their website is chock full of wine reviews, tips and tricks from active community members.

I’ve been a member for about 6 months and have come to really enjoy their daily newsletter and user contributed content. Turns out things are going well for the Snooth team as they just announced they hit 500,000 registered users. Well deserved, I’ll raise a glass to that.

Check out the site, subscribe to the newsletter and let me know what you think!

Next time you don’t feel like spilling a few drops of wine pouring yourself a refill, this $12.99 bottle is for you.

[Image Credit: Dr. Vino]